Unveiled at Made by Google 2024, Pixel Studio is one of many new AI features coming to newly announced Google phones, including the Pixel 9, Pixel 9 Pro, Pixel 9 Pro XL, and Pixel 9 Pro Fold.
The search engine giant boasts that Pixel Studio is users’ new “creative assistant.” With features like text-to-image, you can have tons of fun with Pixel Studio and create crazy AI-generated images. At a recent press event, I was able to see Pixel Studio in action as it competes with OpenAI’s DALLE-3 and Midjourney.
Don’t like your DALL-E images? Now you can edit them with OpenAI.
This crazy cat was created in Pixel Studio
With the prompt “A cat wearing flat black pixel sunglasses in New York City,” I saw the following AI-generated cat appear on the Pixel 9 Pro Fold:
Check out this AI-generated kitten on the Pixel 9 Pro Fold.
Photo credit: Kimberly Gedeon / Mashable
What surprised me most was the low latency. The AI-generated kitten appeared in less than two seconds.
So what underlies Pixel Studio’s text-to-image capabilities? An AI model called Imagen 3, a competitor to DALLE-3 and Midjourney.
Mashable Speed of Light
Imagen 3, which emerged from the search engine giant’s DeepMind AI lab, is capable of understanding natural language input. It can deliver high-quality images in a variety of styles, from photorealistic cityscapes to oil paintings with complex texture.
Imagen 3 is Google’s latest and most powerful model – and it runs in the cloud. Once it “lands” on your phone, you can edit and refine the image, leveraging on-device AI (the Google Tensor G4 chip in the case of the Pixel 9 Pro Fold). In other words, Pixel Studio combines both cloud and local processing.
I watched the Googler revise his original prompt and change the cool cat to a cat with a shield, and the message was, “Oh yeah!” (This part still happens in the cloud.)
Now it is holding a sign.
Photo credit: Kimberly Gedeon / Mashable
You can also change the style of the image with one of the suggested visual looks, including sketch, vintage, anime, 3D creation, cinema, video game, cyberpunk and more. This is what the anime style looks like:
The “anime” version of the original kitten.
Photo credit: Kimberly Gedeon / Mashable
Next, you can launch the in-app editing suite and make changes to your liking. This is where on-device processing comes into play. For example, you can isolate and remove an unwanted object. You can also turn your AI-generated creation into a sticker so you can share it with your friends.
Add some text and you have a meme
Photo credit: Kimberly Gedeon / Mashable
You can access Pixel Studio from the home screen.
Arrow points to the new Pixel Studio app
Photo credit: Kimberly Gedeon / Mashable
Pixel Studio will be available across the entire Pixel 9 smartphone family, starting with the $799 Pixel 9, and is available for pre-order starting today.
